


The loneliness still feels the same

by rudesunyoung



Category: BLACKPINK (Band)
Genre: Angst, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Friendship, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:20:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26211814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rudesunyoung/pseuds/rudesunyoung
Summary: Jennie isn't ready to talk about a lot of things. She's not ready to discuss what therapy is like; she's not ready to talk about the side-effects of the medication; and she's certainly not ready to talk about that night two years ago in Busan. Writing it all down, though, that helps somewhat. At least when she's writing about it, it makes it real. It lets her know that everything that has happened to her has always been real.
Relationships: Jennie Kim/Lalisa Manoban | Lisa
Comments: 14
Kudos: 71
Collections: Girl Group Jukebox - Mixtape Round





	The loneliness still feels the same

**Author's Note:**

> written for GG Jukebox Mixtape Round, inspired by Holo by Lee Hi. the first time i heard this song, and everyday after that, i knew i had to write something about it.

**June 13th**

**Saturday**

_Sometimes, I feel like there are two people living inside of me. Maybe...i don’t know. Maybe **'living inside of me'** is the wrong word. Maybe there are just two versions of me. There’s one girl: she has every memory, every event, every feeling that I have ever felt inside of her. She has all of the good stuff﹣all of the things that would make someone want to smile for no apparent reason._

_But there’s someone else...and I think...some days I think that I’m the **‘someone’** else. I’m the one that can’t remember those good things. I can’t remember the last time I watched a movie that made me laugh so hard that my stomach ached. I can’t remember sitting down at the table and genuinely eating something because I liked it, and not because I just needed it in my mouth. Sometimes, yeah, I guess I feel things. But there are things that I don’t want to feel﹣things that I wish they would just go away. _

_I wish i could tell that other girl to give me a little bit of her happiness, to give me a little bit of the stuff inside of her that makes her feel good. I wish that she would allow me to see what that feels like._

“She says she wants to study in London. Did she tell you that?”

Taewoo lifts his glass of water to his mouth, taking a quick sip before he sets it back down and wipes his mouth with the napkin beside him. 

Suhyun briefly glances up at her husband, her mouth moving like she’s trying to figure out what she wants to say before she actually says it. 

“She’s brought it up the handful of times that I’ve talked to her, yes. She says Oxford would be a great school to study biology at. “ 

Jennie picks at her food, moving the baby tomatoes around in her salad and poking one of them until it bursts bright red across the leafy greens. Her food is mostly cold. She tried a bit of the steak and barely got past two bites before her father was bringing up stuff about traveling and Haejin’s schooling. 

Somewhere between inhaling a piece of the meat and reaching for her own glass, she felt sick and set her fork down, choosing to silently listen to her parents instead. 

“I know a few friends that studied there,” her father says absentmindedly. “But I thought she liked that school in the U.S...Columbia, was it? She had her mind set on Columbia.”

“Something must have changed,” she shrugged. “There was a professor, I think. He’s been conducting research and she sounded like she was really interested. You should have heard her on the phone.” 

Taewoo grabs his knife and cuts a strip of steak off, picking it up with his fork and dipping it in the sauce beside his plate, before he eats it. 

“We’ll need to discuss that at a later time,” he says around his food. “I just don’t know how I feel about sending her to London, especially at a time like this.” 

“At a time like what?” her mother raises her eyebrow. 

“You know what I mean,” he sighs and sets down his utensils. One of his hands comb back the few strands of hair that fall into his face, and with his forehead exposed, Jennie can see the wrinkles in his skin, the ones that have deepened with every year. 

When they were little and their father would fall asleep in the living room with the TV on and the newspaper in his lap, Haejin would lean over and try to fill in his wrinkles with a marker. They would giggle endlessly and Haejin would even shove her if Jennie laughed too much, but it’s one of the clearest memories that she has as a child. 

She could only imagine what her father would do if Jennie leaned over and drew a line right across his forehead right now. 

“Are your classes okay, Jennie?”

“Huh?”

Her mother snorts, shaking her head softly, and leans over to gently rap her knuckles against Jennie’s temple. 

“I _said_ ,” she smiled. “Are your classes going okay?”

“Oh,” Jennie flushes and picks her fork back up, pushing her lettuce around her plate. “Um, yeah they’re going alright. I mean...just getting ready for midterm week, that’s all.” 

“That’s good,” Suhyun grins and then lifts her fork to her mouth, biting off a piece of steak. “I saw your portfolio the other day when I was cleaning out your room. It looks good.”

“Thanks,” Jennie mumbles. Her right hand grabs a hold of her shirt in her lap and her father reaches across the table to squeeze her shoulder. 

“Just don’t overwork yourself, hm? Take a break every now and then, kiddo.”

“Y-Yeah, I know. I won’t.”

* * *

**June 15th**

**Monday**

_I wonder why people feel alone? I mean in the literal sense, like in a crowded room or sitting at a table eating dinner with friends. I wonder what goes on inside our head to make it seem as if we’re the only one there. Sometimes it’s not even that, sometimes we’re just there and it feels like no one else wants us there._

_I think this is one of those days._

“I think he wanted me to invite him up to my apartment and when I didn’t...the night just got very awkward.” 

Jisoo snorts into her Coke, pulling her straw away from her mouth to gesture at Chaeyoung with her cup. 

“Did you guys kiss?”

“No,” Chaeyoung frowns, tucking her hair behind her ear. “And why does that matter? We just held hands on the way back, but his palms were _really_ fucking sweaty. It was uncomfortable.” 

Jisoo laughs loudly, almost knocking her cup over, just before Chaeyoung quickly grabs it and shoves the straw in between her own lips. Her cheeks are flushed, but under the dim lighting of the dining hall, it looks hard to tell. 

“That’s the last fucking time I let you talk me into seeing someone from your poetry class!” She hisses.

She even points her finger at Jisoo for good measure but it’s no use because Chaeyoung has said that one too many times for it to be taken seriously anymore. 

“Y’all are so fucking _weird_ , I swear.”

Jisoo can barely talk because she’s laughing so hard, but she manages to get out between a fit of giggles, _“what happened?”_ and then she’s laughing all over again. It’s so loud, that her entire mouth opens when she laughs, but her eyes do this thing where they nearly disappear in the folds of her eyelids and it just means that she’s laughing for real.

 _“What happened?”_ Chaeyoung mocks with a funny voice. “Wouldn’t you like to fucking know, you piece of shit.”

Angrily, she shoves the straw in between her lips again to suck noisily at the rest of the soda at the bottom of the cup, before she sets it back down and huffs. 

“He kept saying some shit about my hair looking like _‘winter fire…’_ and _‘January embers?’_ what the fuck does that even mean?” 

Jisoo’s hand slaps down on the table so hard that it startles Jennie. It makes her jump in her chair and her knee hits the bottom of the table. She has to bite down on her bottom lip so she doesn't let out a cry when Jisoo starts cackling. 

“He recited a poem to you from IT?!” 

Lisa catches the tail-end of that question, carefully holding two trays with each hand, and trying not to jostle the drinks on the tray or tip over the basket of fries on to the floor. Jennie helps her, reaching forward to take one of the trays and slide it across to Jisoo and Chaeyoung, while Lisa pulls her chair out. 

“Thanks,” she chuckles, smiling at Jennie. “What are you guys talking about?”

“Her date!” Jisoo wheezes, tears pooling at the corner of her eyes. “Her date tried to cop a feel after reading her a poem from IT!” 

Chaeyoung plucks one of the fries smothered in cheese out of the basket and moves her arm back like she’s contemplating throwing it at Jisoo, but she just glares at the older girl, and turns around, tossing the fry in her mouth. 

“Fucking annoying,” she grumbles with a roll of her eyes. “That’s the _last_ time I go on another one of these blind dates. I mean it, Kim!” 

Lisa’s too busy unwrapping her burger from the foil to understand what’s going on, but she nudges Jennie gently with her shoulder and bites off a small piece of her burger, motioning towards the other girls with her eyebrows. 

“Wahf up with them?” she asks around a mouthful of food. 

There’s a bit of ketchup on her lip and even though she’s not finished chewing the food in her mouth, she’s dipping a french fry in mayonnaise and shoving it in her mouth. Jennie tries not to cringe, but Lisa’s pushing her burger at her and motioning for the other girl to eat. 

“Some date Chaeyoung went on,” Jennie rolls her eyes. “It was bad...I think.” 

She says that last part quietly, so she doesn’t expect Chaeyoung to nearly choke on her chicken nugget before launching into a coughing fit. 

“It was worse than bad!”

* * *

**June 19th**

**Friday**

_Sometimes i actually hate writing in this thing. My mom gave it to me when she came back from a trip to California. Out of all the things to bring me back, she gives me this moleskin notebook._

_Do you think she recognized that something was wrong with me? Do you think she knew that even three years ago i thought my head was too heavy for my body? That sometimes it feels like all i’m doing is lugging myself around?_

All morning, Jennie lays in bed. 

She can hear the sounds of her mom making dinner downstairs. She can smell the pajeon cooking on the stove: the kimchi, green onions, and scallions that waft up through the vents and start to permeate her room. 

It makes her roll over and bury her face into her pillow. The cotton is difficult to breathe through, makes it a little bit uncomfortable for her to inhale and exhale, and the longer she lays there, the worse the pressure on her chest becomes.

_Roll over._

_Roll over._

It’s like she can hear the voice in her head telling her to do it, and she feels the way her lungs burn as she continues to lie face down in the material, but she doesn’t move.

_Roll over._

_Jennie, roll over._

The knock at her door startles her over on her side. She takes in a lungful of air, her chest expanding with each breath, frantically trying to grasp onto the tiny particles of dust that float through the air and cling to her sheets. 

The door knobs rattles. Then a pause. Then it rattles again. 

By the second time the doorknob is tried again, Jennie sits up in her bed, feeling around her chest and grasping at her shirt with her left hand. Underneath her fingertips she can feel her heart pounding against her ribcage. She can feel her torso lift and deflate with each breath that she takes.

_Is that supposed to be comforting to her?_

“Jennie?” It’s her father. 

“Jennie, are you awake? The food is almost ready, come downstairs.” 

She doesn’t answer him. She doesn’t even hum or make a noncommittal noise. She just sits there, her legs spread out on the bed and her chest heaving from the amount of oxygen she’s trying to take in. 

Jennie can see his feet under the door though. She can see him standing on the other side, waiting for her on the other side. 

It feels like a game that they’re playing, except for they’re really not. Who wins in scenarios like this? Who makes the rules? Jennie?

“If you’re hungry﹣” he says and stops just short of saying anything else. He must think about what he’s saying; he must understand that some days it’s useless. 

He has to know that sometimes Jennie can hear him and sometimes she wishes she couldn’t hear a single thing. 

When he walks away, Jennie listens to his footsteps until they disappear down the stairs.

* * *

**June 21st**

**Sunday**

_Sometimes, i feel like jisoo knows what’s wrong with me. She’s my closest friend. I’ve known her since we were in middle school and she sat three seats behind me in Korean History, falling asleep every time the teacher put a movie on._

_I can still remember the way she snored. It was so loud that it would make me laugh. That’s how she always got caught﹣by her snoring._

_Sometimes she tries to make me laugh as hard as i did back then. Sometimes she’s really good at it too. I just wish it was easy, you know? To laugh at her again._

_I want to tell her some days that i appreciate the effort, that I know she’s trying, but that it’s too hard right now. Sometimes i do feel like laughing. Sometimes i do feel like grabbing onto her arm and throwing my head back to bellow out a laugh._

_And sometimes i wish she would just stop talking. Sometimes i wish she would stop being my friend._

_Sometimes, i wish she would hate me as much as i wanted her to._

Jennie watches Jisoo sketch out a portrait on her tablet. The details are not all the way there yet, but she can make out the outlines and the features of the sharp point of the person's nose and the short hair. It only takes Jennie a couple of minutes before she props herself up on her elbow and snickers to herself.

"Is that Jooyoung?"

Jooyoung's a senior in the engineering department. She was the same girl that Jennie used to work with on the weekends at the convenience store, bagging groceries and stocking the shelves with ramyun, ready-to-go meals, and soft drinks. She's also the girl that Jisoo's been talking to for nearly a month and a half, mostly online and a handful of times when she manages to catch them at the dining hall. 

Jisoo startles, almost dropping her tablet on the floor and hurries to exit out of the software and turn it off, setting her stylus down so she can scramble to her feet. "No!"

"Stop lying," Jennie laughs. "I could tell that from a mile away, you're not exactly subtle."

"Shut up!"

Jisoo moves to the kitchen, rummaging around in the fridge before pulling out a carton of milk and grabbing one of the many assorted boxes of cereal on top of the fridge. Jennie rolls off the couch and follows after her, sliding up to the bar stool so she can take a seat and watch her friend make a bowl of cereal with shaking hands.

"It's cute," she comments. "You must really like her."

"No one said all of that," Jisoo mutters but even from here Jennie can see the tips of her ears turn red. 

"You don't have to say anything." 

When Jisoo turns around, her face looks annoyed and Jennie only smiles wider, making grabby hands at the bowl of Frosted Flakes until Jisoo passes it to her and moves to grab down another bowl from the cabinet.

"Nothing is official anyways," she mumbles and Jennie spoons some cereal in her mouth before wiping her lips with the back of her hand. "Yet."

"Huh?"

"Nothing is official _yet_ ," Jennie clarifies. 

Jisoo blushes even harder if that's possible and grabs the bowl of cereal, making her way quickly to the couch and shrugging off Jennie as she tries to grab her arm. She almost topples over the stool, but manages to climb down, keeping the bowl close to her chest and sits beside her best friend, their backs against the couch.

"I don't want to rush into anything or scare her or seem too eager," she says around a spoonful.

"If you're happy, you're happy," Jennie shrugs. "Let yourself have fun. I can see how much lighter you've been recently and you should just let things go as they please. Even I can see that you make Jooyoung extremely happy," Jennie says, nudging her shoulder.

She spoons some more cereal into her mouth and watches as Jisoo stares down at her cereal, the tiny chocolate balls floating above the top. She twirls her spoon inside the bowl, doing it enough that the Cocoa Puffs begin to turn the milk into a light brown color.

"You're right."

"Nine times out of ten, I usually am."

Jisoo rolls her eyes but she doesn’t make another comment.

 _What does it feel like to like someone?_ Jennie wants to ask her. _Are you scared? Does it make you nervous to think that someone wants to be with you?_

_Is it okay to want to feel that way, to want to feel wanted?_

_Tell me_ , Jennie wants to whisper. _Tell me what it feels like to know that you’re enough, to know that there’s enough of a person inside of you to share it with someone else._

When Jisoo puts another spoonful of Cocoa Puffs into her mouth, some of the milk dribbles down her chin and she wipes it away while turning to face Jennie.

"What?"

"Nothing," she shakes her head.

The beat of silence between them is only long enough for Jennie to grow slightly uncomfortable. That is until Jisoo sets her bowl down beside her, leaning over to poke a finger in the middle of Jennie’s cheek. 

“What are you﹣”

“I haven’t seen you smile in awhile,” she says softly.

Jennie spoons some of the cereal in her mouth, avoiding the statement, but Jisoo continues to stare at her because she can wait. 

“Just because you smile,” she shakes her head. “Just because you smile, that doesn’t mean anything.”

_She wants to tell her that she used to smile a lot when it was hurting, that she used to smile when she didn’t want to because it kept all the questions at bay. She wants to tell Jisoo that she used to smile because her mom said that it would make it better, that if she smiled then she might start to feel good again._

_Why do people always think that smiling means you’re okay?_

“No, I know,” Jisoo shakes her head, pulling her finger away and setting it back in her lap. She clasps her hands together and Jennie wants to tell her that her cereal will get soggy, that the milk will become thick and she’ll have to pour it out. 

“I just meant that at least if I had seen you smile, like with my own eyes at least, I could know that you were a little bit alright while being with me.”

* * *

**June 24th**

**Wednesday**

_I wish that i could stop feeling things, you know? Like i didn’t have to feel emotions. Would that make me a psychopath or sociopath? I always get those two mixed up. Which is the one that doesn’t feel any emotions? I wish i could be rewired that way._

_I just wish some of the time that I didn’t have to deal with the consequences of feeling this way._

* * *

**June 30th**

**Tuesday**

_My mom said that if i took better care of myself, that i would feel better._

_What she really means by that, is if i were to start going back to church with her on Sundays, i could meet other women my age and have a support group. She means that i could speak to the pastor and ask him to pray it away and send me home with the protection of God. She means that i should stop eating ramyun and going over to Jisoo’s place for dinner, even though i eat the most when i’m around Jisoo._

_She means that she wants me to meet with her friend’s son this weekend and maybe if i just talked to a nice, handsome church boy, that suddenly all my problems would just vanish into thin air._

_She means that i should take walks more often. If i go outside and get some fresh air, maybe my head won’t feel so cloudy and maybe i’ll start to be happy again._

_Doesn’t my mom know that I am taking care of myself? Doesn’t she know that I wake up and leave the house every morning to head to campus? Doesn’t she know that just by me being alive, i’ve already done enough to take care of myself?_

* * *

**July 2nd**

**Friday**

_One day i tried to killed myself. Looking back on it, i’m sort of glad i wasn’t successful with it. It was….maybe two years ago? I was in a bad place, maybe not much worse than what i’m at right now, but it was different i guess that time._

_I was at my grandparent’s place in busan. I was visiting them for the weekend because i hadn’t seen them in a long time. We had food, went to the beach, i read some books outside on the terrace, and for the first time in a long time, it didn’t feel like my head was underwater._

_I don’t know when it happened exactly and maybe it was a slow moving thing, really. Almost like a car crash that you see happen right in front of you, but you’re paralyzed to stop it._

_I think i was paralyzed by my own suffering._

_I don’t want to go into details...maybe because it still hurts to pull the wool back and look at it, maybe because i used to think that if i stared at it too long, that it might make all the feelings come back, that it might make me want to do it all over again. And that’s the thing about this. I don’t want to die._

_I don’t want to die._

_I just want the suffering to stop._

_I wish someone would tell me how to make it stop._

* * *

**July 5th**

**Monday**

_I like someone. Well, i don’t know. Maybe **‘like’** is too strong of a term to use. I know this person﹣this girl﹣she’s alright. She’s my friend. You want to know her name, right?_

_It’s lisa._

_I met her through Jisoo. Apparently they both took a stand-up comedy course as an elective during the summer and hit it off. Jisoo’s actually funny though, so i could see why she would take the class. Lisa, on the other hand, she’s not funny. Nothing she ever says is funny, but she has a loud laugh._

_Like if she laughed at something hard enough, you could hear it clear across a room. And i think that’s what i like about her._

_She has so much happiness inside of her. She looks like someone opened up different pieces of her chest and meticulously implanted parts of the sun inside of her. I wonder what it feels like to be okay inside and out. I wonder if she knows that when i look at her, my chest hurts a bit less, that the fog in my head clears just a bit when she smiles._

_She doesn’t make anything okay. No one person could ever make you okay._

_But she makes it bearable for me. She makes me want to try to help myself a little more each day._

_I just wish i could put it into words and tell her what i meant. I wish i could tell her that i hope she never stops smiling, that i hope she knows i could collect pieces of the sun and it still wouldn’t make me feel the same way that her smile does._

* * *

**July 28th**

**Wednesday**

_i told lisa that i liked her because i knew she felt the same way about me._

_we were walking from the bus stop toward the complex that I stay at with my parents. it was late, nearly nine o'clock and I had pushed a few dollars into lisa's hand and told her to take a cab back home._

_she smiled at me, then thanked me, and then we sat down on the curb outside the complex and just talked._

_i told her that i'm not ready for anything yet, that i don't know when i'll ever be ready for anything. and she looked at me, she looked at the lights that were reflecting off my eyes and she shook her head and sighed._

_she told me that she didn't want to rush me, that it was okay that i wasn't ready._

_**I just want to be your friend right now,**_ she had murmured.

_and it felt weird hearing her say that because we already were friends. we shared playlists in the library when we studied. we went to see a movie that was playing every Saturday if neither of us were busy. We would sit outside the video game store on days when a new game was being released and wait up for it. we are friends in every sense of the word._

_I knew what she meant though_

_**Tell me when you don't want us to be friends anymore. Tell me when it's okay for you, because it'll always be okay with me.** _

* * *

**August 2nd**

**Sunday**

_i don't like staying awake at night. it gives me too much time to think with my thoughts and that's always a bad thing. when i have too much time alone, it feels like my thoughts consume me, it feels like they crawl inside of my head and make a home for themselves there. i don't want that; i've never wanted that._

_but the medication does that sometimes. it'll keep me up for hours at a time, long past the time that i normally like to go to bed. sometimes i might start up my laptop and watch a movie, just to give my brain something to process. other times, i might walk downstairs and sit outside the complex._

_i just don't like being alone. i just don't like thinking for more than necessary. i don't want to do that again._

* * *

**August 13th**

**Thursday**

_Jisoo and I went out to a new café. it was really nice and the food was really great. i can't remember what i ordered exactly, but i think it was tonkatsu. It was easily the most delicious meal i've had all week._

* * *

**August 17th**

**Monday**

_not everyday will be like this. i don't always feel sad or uninterested in things. there are things that make me smile like the dog that scratches at the window every time i walk past the hardware shop on my way to the bus._

_there's an ice cream sundae that i eat when i have money and it's absolutely delicious. there's nuts, bananas, strawberries, and three different types of ice cream that i eat it with. it's the best._

_if i queue up something from my watchlist on Netflix, usually something i've already watched before, it'll make me smile. movies have that effect on me. they make me cry, and laugh, and shake my head in frustration, but most importantly-they make me feel. i think that's all i ever want really, is to feel something, to know it's real._

_that's what i do. i try to look for all those little pieces outside of our complex that bring me even just a smidge of happiness. i try to look for those things that even when i'm not feeling okay, it **makes** me feel okay._

* * *

**August 21st**

**Friday**

_whenever Lisa holds my hand, she squeezes my fingers and i think she knows i like it, because she always does that._

_I asked her once how she knew and she said, **'sometimes you smile or squeeze my hand back.'**_

_I want to whisper to her that she has to be careful with me. that she needs to know that there are parts of me that are not yet all together. that there are some parts inside my head and in my heart that she can't squeeze and make it all better._

_and sometimes i think she knows that. sometimes, i think she's trying to be as gentle as she can be._

* * *

**September 1st**

**Tuesday**

_i'm sitting outside and the wind feels really cool today. i'm supposed to be meeting up with some of my friends at the beach. it'll be sunny today._

_i enjoy moments like this and even when i don't, i still try to find at least one thing that's good about it. if i think about it hard enough, i can feel the sand underneath my feet, and the smell of the salt water, and the ramyun as it warms my skin in my lap, and the way Lisa will crowd us all together for a group picture. there are all these little things, that even if it may seem difficult to do, somehow become necessary to me. I guess that's because i'm so obsessed with experiencing something, with wanting everything around me to be real._

_i think that once it's real, once i'm at the beach, and for a tiny second i'm surrounded by people that care and love and support me, then it might make it easier today._

_it just might make the loneliness stop today._


End file.
